This invention relates to packing equipment, and more particularly to apparatus for aligning packaging blanks, especially blanks for cigarette boxes. This invention also relates to a method utilizing that apparatus for blanks disposed in a stack, and to a cigarette packing machine equipped with such apparatus.
Before they can be processed by a machine for packaging a product, packaging blanks are frequently supplied to the machine in stacks that have been withdrawn from a pallet. U.S. Pat. No. 4,993,915 describes a depalletizer for feeding a cigarette packer with blanks for cigarette boxes. Because of the manipulations and transfers to which each stack of blanks is subjected before arriving at the packing machine, either before or after depalletization, one or more of the blanks in the stack may have shifted slightly relative to the rest of the stack. If precautions are not taken to realign the stack before it is inserted in the packer, the misaligned blank will generally not be accepted by the machine. Instead, it may be bent or even destroyed by jamming, which also usually causes stoppage of the packing line.
Germany (Fed. Rep.) 22 24 107 describes apparatus for aligning packs of blanks which systematically turns over such packs. In Great Britain 1,406,251, the alignment apparatus is chiefly intended to turn over every other pack of labels appearing in reversed directions on a pallet, the labels being supplied one by one to the apparatus. Great Britain 1,325,288 discloses a device more particularly intended to align a covering sheet on a pack that is already aligned.